Feb. 22nd, 2017

Feb. 22nd, 2017

There are a number of excellent arguments against basic income including this one from the UK, and there's the simple fact that if you want a solid social safety net, paying everyone, including the majority of the society who don't need it isn't necessarily the most efficient or effective method. I thought a lot about basic income a couple of years ago, and after considering these arguments decided it might not be the best course of action. However recently considered one counter-argument that (to me at least) makes all of these objections irrelevant – resentment.

The politics of bitter, hate-filled resentment is much of the reason the US and the UK are both now having considerable problems, and much of Western Europe may be headed in the same direction. It's more difficult for me to talk about anywhere else, but in the US at least, the data is clear, the rise of President Puppet wasn't due to economic deprivation, it was due to the fact that white bigots felt that other people (immigrants, people of color, urbanites, and in fact anyone who isn't a white bigot) were doing better than before (despite that fact that many of them still weren't doing as well as the white bigots), while the white bigots were mostly doing about the same, and they (the white bigots) were both jealous and afraid they'd lose out. This resentment (fueled by President Puppet and his white supremacist traveling show) motivated them to get out and vote. Until we manage to improve humanity in some global way (better education is a good start, and breaking any sort of moral link between money and human worth would be an equally good one), these sorts of resentment will continue to exist. As a result, it's far too easy for people who aren't benefiting from social safety net programs to vote to cut them. Also, one of the continuing problems with all social welfare programs is that the ultra-rich (who mostly loathe paying taxes) spend money on propaganda campaigns aimed at fueling working class resentment against social safety net programs for people poorer than them, using the time-honored tactic of "How about you and them fight".

Basic income utterly defangs all that. Sure, many 1%ers and 0.1%ers who would need to pay notably higher taxes to make this work care more about the taxes they lose than the $10,000/year they gain, but in addition to vastly helping out someone who makes $5-10,000 year, an extra $10,000 is going to be pretty noticeably to someone who makes $40,000 year. As a result, any vote to decrease basic income is a vote to get less money yourself, and that's simply something that most people aren't willing to do. Thus, I've again changed my mind and am strongly for the idea of basic income.